Because She Wanted To
by snowdropsinwinter
Summary: It was so quiet, Van could hear the doors and walls breathing and groaning in their quiet sleep. Soon everything will change, he thought and absently picked at the golden edge of his collar. Triviality of human nature, he mused and turned from the mirror
1. Chapter 1

It was so quiet; Van could hear the doors and walls breathing and groaning in their quiet sleep. Soon everything will change, he thought, and absently picked at the golden edge of his collar. Triviality of human nature, he mused and turned from the mirror. Triviality of my nature, more specifically. Like woman's heels his shiny boots clicked against the marble, his steps heavy and strained.

Broad and old, the velvet curtains didn't move. "Come on" he whispered and tugged with both hands. The curtains gave in and dust flakes slid and swirled against his still form. Almost reassuringly the wind felt soft and calm and Van shook his head at the thought. "Forgive me" he breathed and looked up. Pale and unreal, the Mystic Moon still lingered in the morning like insomnia. "Ridiculous" Van smiled and pulled off his silk gloves. "Utterly ridiculous. Can you believe it?" he asked and no one answered. His nose was broken, his shoulders broader, his voice darker and his back scarred; and he wondered if she knew. The top of his boots were touching the wall now. He leaned against the smooth windowsill. Sleep still draped across the morning and he could not help but whish that night would always linger, banning all that was to come with a new day. "I have to try. I wish… it were different; believe me, I do" he whispered. "But I have no choice. I have to try for her, she deserves that at least" Van sighed.

"She looks beautiful" Merle whispered from the door. "I just saw her; beautiful like a queen, Van". He turned and smiled. She tilted her head and her face had a look of calm and promise. Such an adult now, he thought. "You look beautiful" he said with a tired tinge. With her hair pinned back and her green dress softly floating against her tall legs, she no longer reminded him of a child. So much is changing, he realized as he walked over to hug her.

"It will be all right, Van"

"Maybe."

"She loves you" Merle smiled and rubbed his arms. "Allen is waiting outside" she said and kissed his cheek.

Slowly he stirred towards the table by his window. The pink pendant shone red against the dark oak. He ran his thumb across the stone and it felt smooth and true like her skin. "God, forgive me Hitomi" he exhaled and followed Merle.

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Disclaimer: All characters and concepts affiliated with Escaflowne do not belong to me. 


	2. Chapter 2

Beyond the white-iron frame of his window panes, Van could see the dark crown of a cypress tree tapping against the balcony railing. A strong gust of wind pushed in and rushed across his naked calf and bare chest. "What have I done?" he whispered and shivered.

He pressed his temple into the pillow and listened to the muffled echo of curtains and wind. Earlier that morning, when he had stood on the grand marble balcony among the boxes and vases of white-green tulips and hydrangeas, he had wished that it were Hitomi's white gloved thumb, running over his shaking hand. Loud and happy the crowd on the square below had roared and the air had felt damp and thick with the smell of bodies too tightly packed.

"Do you think you will regret this?" she had turned to him, her loose black hair twirling against in the cool breeze, a striking contrast to her crisp white dress.

"Will you?" he had whispered "I want to make you happy; I do, Penelope"

"I know" she had smiled and nodded.

Like candle smoke, the remnants of the fireworks lingered grey-white above a row of elegant white houses. Humid and coaly, Van could smell Allen's elaborate present through the wet-green wafts of the tulips for a long time. Van had pinched off the top of a hydrangea and carefully slid it behind her ear and this time both had smiled.

Penelope was not a romantic, but clever and strong, which made her all the more beautiful. It had drizzled and then rained and Van and Penelope had waited in a gazebo inside the Kanzaki Gardens. Her hair had turned wild and rough in the heavy, humid air and she had leaned against a wood column and laughed.

Van had set on one of the oak benches of the octagon and looked out at the dark green blur. His horticulturist nurtured the garden but Van wanted to leave it wild and free and fast.

"So it is her you are in love with?" she had tilted her head and smiled. "I know it had to be someone."

Van looked up at her. She continued to smile. The rain was drenched with raw earth and cut grass; he could almost taste it in his breath. "I was a child then" he finally answered.

"But you are none any longer" she said "Neither of us, is."

"Yes" he had breathed and the wind bit at his bare arms. "I'm sorry, Penelope…I don't know what to tell you."

"Nothing" she had said. "I am not trying to play the brave little martyr Van. You have fought hard for this world and your country and I for mine. I know what this means…and surely, so do you."

Yes, and now it is done, he thought.

The rain had been snapping against the marble railing and the curtains were twirling in a craze. Rain seeped in and the neat clay tiles by the balcony were already deep red. Penelope shifted closer to Van; and he realized she had been awake. He could feel her skin on his; her tie, her stomach, her collar bone. She looked up and he cradled his palm to the warmth of her neck.

"I really do want you to be happy."

"I know" she said and kissed the hard muscle of his throat.

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** Great many thanks to **jossi-31, EsCaFReaK101, rIOko, frubaforever, Syolen **and** sqeekers **for reviewing!**


	3. Chapter 3

Hitomi's daughter was born lifeless and gray-blue. "Like a seal," she remembered thinking as the room went bright white and the Venetian doctor started suctioning her mouth. Thick flakes of snow glided down from the white sky. Adone guided his wife's head back onto the pillow so Hitomi wouldn't be able to see the slick form down below. The oxygen tank hissed angrily. In the minutes that followed, as they waited and waited for their daughter to cry, all the hopes they had stored up were suffocated under the weight of the new future that filled the room with fear.

Two weeks later, five days after Hitomi's twenty-sixth birthday, her only clear thought was that her toes felt cold and clammy. The snow was hard and the sun bright white as the priest lead and she followed. "Be brave" her mother-in-law whispered. The faint rush of tires beyond the circle of naked oaks insisted that this forlorn place was not a nightmare. And when the hushing murmur of heels and sobs no longer echoed through the old graveyard; and words of eternity and heaven burned through Hitomi's mind like purgatory, she barely noticed her little girl descending towards the frozen ground.

When Hitomi was twenty-four, she used to have a cat, a raven god, who would jump through her open window by her bed in the middle of the night and land on her chest. She would half awaken from her dizzy summer sleep. He laid his head on her sticky throat and purr, smelling of coal and crushed pine-a deep fragrance not unlike Van's.

She missed him-but without regret. Hitomi felt insatiably proud of what they had done and of the king he would become. "You will be a great man" she had whispered towards the moon on the day he turned twenty. And she knew with more certainty than ever that the only way to respect both of their legacies was in her world and her time.

The asthmatic lady, who used to be famous oboe player in Mussolini's area, was by far Hitomi's greatest fan. During her youth the bony lady had acquired many tastes, including a passionate one for dark, musky tobacco.

"Nothing beats the smell of good tobacco, Lady Hitomi. Mind you, not the disgusting stuff they put in cigarettes these days, but the real, authentic thing!" she would rasp, propped on pillows next to the white-iron windows. "Imagine sitting on a hard chair with your oboe in your hand. You are nervous. And then they open-thick velvet curtains and you are instantly cocooned within the sweet, musky smoke. Dark and masculine" she would smile wistfully.

She was the first of Hitomi's patients to die. Four children, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren buried her on midday in Venice. As Hitomi stood there, with the black tails of her headscarf bouncing against her nose and cheeks, she wondered who would one day throw earth on her casket.

Summer was ending; it had rained and the wind was cool but the sky bright and the sun hot. They held the memorial service in a white tent. Its cotton glowed beneath bright white rays; and the hushed, black mourners looked so very out of place in the light, open pavilion. _What a strange funeral_, Hitomi thought and sipped her glass of water.

"Miss Kanzaki?"

She turned; and her heels sank deep into the moist, glistening grass. Water flopped across her glass's rim and a low voice laughed kindly.

"Careful there, Miss" Adone said and grinned.

With the identical cutting cheeks and thin nose, he was clearly the old lady's grandson; and though Hitomi noted that his broad shoulders and long legs lacked the grace and calmness of his grandmother, there was a redeeming boyishness to his face and smile.

Don't judge too quickly, she thought and shook his hand. He smiled.

"She really loved you."

"And I will miss her" she replied truthfully.

Like Hitomi, he too was a doctor, and quite young as well. He had been diligent child, though not quite a prodigy, attended Oxford and now worked too many sleep-deprived nights as a cardiac-surgeon.

"I wish I could have helped her." he confided. He had lived in the same neo-baroque house for seventeen years, gone to university and moved back to the same neighborhood. He knew that life, quite poignantly, came with an expiration date; and the thick Cuban cigars and other smoky concoctions had permanently left their mark on her. But death was new to him and so was change.

"We need change for life to be meaningful" Hitomi said slowly, searchingly "And maybe death for us to understand time and age."

Suddenly surprised, his shoulder leaning against the white-wood tent pole, Adone was not sure why he confessed to Hitomi so willingly. Maybe it had been the dizzy after-shock of loss and funeral.

To him it was a very simple answer, childish almost in its optimism, but her words lingered in his mind and he remembered them.

Later Adone could not quite say when he fell in love with Hitomi; but he often believed it must have been that very moment.

The white-washed, brick hospital with its white-iron fence and adjacent china-garden was quite idyllic and even more beautiful. Both Adone and Hitomi, however, enjoyed very little of it or sleep. Coffee became a life-elixir, slightly bitter from the stagnant vending machine; but drank together with talk and laughter it could not have tasted any more exquisite to either of them.

And so they met for coffee even when they did not have to work. They must have known where the talks, laughter and too-easy confessions were leading, but with childish innocence, their time together could not have felt any more natural.

"I used to dream of being here. Having coffee like this" she told him as she balanced the hot cup between her fingers. Adone smiled and Hitomi leaned against the cool, grey-green bridge. Despite her wool blazer, she felt the cold-damp stone of the thin engravings. Who could have thought demons and devils could be beautiful in their grotesqueness?

"I know. I could not imagine a life in any other place but here."

Amidst the dimming afternoon-light, the thin, tall houses stared at their own faces in the wide canal. And as the wind rushed across the corner, the images blew long and wide. Beyond the houses, the horizon shone blue-pink and blended upwards into the dark grey sky.

"Neither could I" she said as her bun tousled loose. Like a delicate angel, her hair shone as a bright halo in the burnt-orange light of the late afternoon.

He brushed his cold fingers against her waist beneath the half-open jacket and the white-hot thrill along their spine felt like strange premonition of days to come. Adone gazed across her bright, open face and she simply smiled.

"So beautiful" he breathed quietly, too nervous and certain to offend her. And so he only he barely grazed his fingers along her warm cheekbone, white chin and the soft, perfumed skin of her throat until he could feel the slender rise of Hitomi's collarbone. With questions to afraid and eager to know, Hitomi raised her chin and felt his warm breath against her cheeks. He smiled and she simply, carefully leaned her soft, parted mouth against his red lips.

With her fingers holding his long, black hair, he both pulled Hitomi against the leather of his coat and pushed her deeply into the stone of the bridge, kissing her clumsily and passionately as if she was the first and last woman he would ever taste. Hitomi felt deaf with the blood rushing in her head and when he leaned down to brush his wet, open lips to the center of her throat, she felt the tip of his tongue and they both felt weak and dizzy.

"Neither could I" he finally echoed Hitomi's last sentence and brushed breathless kisses along her forehead where whips of her hair curled into soft tendrils.

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**One Billion "Thank you"s to** jossi-31, EsCaFReaK101, Inda, frubaforever, sqeekers, serenityrain2233, rIOko **and **Syolen **for their wonderful reviews. **


	4. Chapter 4

As the morning twisted into night Lillian lay in the cool grass. The burnt orange horizon ran into the afternoon sky and brushes of pink flowed through the clouds. The night lingered half-awake, its wind coolly shifting the trees above.

The dark beech tree ahead rustled and two crows lifted into the sky-a black line of arches, shrinking against pelican clouds.

"What will happen now?" Merle breathed. Across the tender-green trees the monks had carried her loosely wrapped form. Ever so slowly they had walked and the glistening leaves had bowed across Lillian's cloaked body.

"My god" she croaked when they unwrapped the white cotton. Blue-white Lillian lay in a pale summer dress, her golden hair sticking matt and oily to her neck and shoulders. The orange candle in Merle's hand trembled and Penelope steadied it with her warm fingers.

"Be brave" she whispered. Merle nodded. She could see Van and Dryden holding Allen up by his elbows. Merle looked at the ground. Her silk slippers were wet and green with strings of grass; and the earth smelled damp and peppery.

She could not have been more pleased with Van when Penelope told her, he had promoted a woman. When she and Allen met the general next to a pottery stand at the Saturday Market, Merle could not have been more surprised either. Tall and thin in her crisp, linear uniform and loose, blue trousers, Lillian would have looked far more natural as a Lady at Van's court.

She taught young women and men, many older than her, at the Royal Knight's Academy. Clever and strong, Lillian quickly rose in Van's esteem: He invited her to join his council.

She had worn a dress that day. Allen stared at her for far too long. Everyone had noticed and Merle had grinned.

"By the gods, Allen" Penelope had teased him "I think somebody is falling very hard." And as the three of them strode down the bright, open hallway, Merle allowed herself a curious glance at Allen's profile-how his blond hair shone like a halo amidst the white morning sun and the obvious way he desperately tried to flatten a smile- and she could not find any reason to disagree.

Three months later, summer had been ending. It had rained and the wind was cool but the sky blue and the sun hot. Behind the castle, Van had abandoned the upward-sloping olive orchards. Now, islands of lavender grew amidst the sweet-heady chamomile blossoms; and the purple–brown twigs snapped and crackled beneath Merle's sandals.

"Come on Lillian; whack his golden head!" Merle had laughed as she arrived to Lillian and Allen blocking each other's blades. Though, she soon realized that this was not a duel but a game-a game of respect and want and something else.

Something deeper and darker, Merle thought as she sat on a withered bark and nervously dragged earth-patterns with her sandals.

When Lillian's thin blade finally pricked Allen's sweaty throat, Merle doubted that Allen could have been any more pleased.

For a very log time Dryden and Milerna simply stared across the yellow-linen tea-table when, a few months later, Allen quite leisurely asked both of them to relive him from his duties.

"You cannot be serious Allen" Millerna breathed "You want to retire?"

And so Allen and Lillian bought a cottage together. The house was beautiful, delicate even, with wide, free windows, flanked by two tall pear trees; its front façade lined with plump hydrangea bushes and heavy, cream blossoms

"I'm so glad you are here" Lillian grinned, the very first time Merle arrived at their garden gate. With her wavy hair loosely blowing against green summer dress, Lillian looked so very different from the tight, severe general Merle was used to.

Lillian deftly locked the bronze gate and pulled Merle down the cobble-stone path. Inside she grabbed Merle's hand and giggling like two school girls, she spent her afternoon pulling Merle through the light, airy rooms.

Two months later Lillian was shot.

When the young messenger interrupted Van's dinner to report the troop casualties, she had been already dead for three days.

The monks chant chimed against tall barks and suddenly the clearing was bright and hot with Lillian's burning body. Quicker than Merle had expected the heavy smoke reached the crowd. She could smell Lillian's charring flesh and hair.

"Let me go" Allen hissed at Dryden and Van.

He stumbled towards the wave of hot wind and pressed his yellow-white lips to two golden bands. "Forgive me my love" he trembled and threw the rings into the rising fire.

Van had never allowed her to attend the mass cremations after the war. Now, she understood why. The way the fire ran up and down Lillian's body and burned it black and red, was worse than anything she could have feared. Merle shut her eyes.

"You shouldn't have come" Van suddenly whispered next to her "I'm so sorry, Merle."

For the first time in many years he looked like boy again in his black trousers and blue-red royal coat. Merle tried to smile. She hiccupped instead.

"Shhh" Van hushed Merle gently and pushed the tousled pink tendrils back into her bun.

Later when Dryden's coach came to drive her back through the blue-black beech trees, Merle watched Van pull Penelope into his arms.

"Good God" he breathed with closed eyes. Penelope brushed her thumb over his black brows and chapped mouth.

"The fault is not yours" she breathed. Van smiled and leaned his cold forehead into her soft hair.

He brushed his cold lips over her loose hair, her eyes, her warm neck and said "Maybe."

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**Thank you** Inda, frubaforever, Syolen, EsCaFReaK101, serenityrain2233, jossi-31, ..., sqeekers **and **Chocolate Shoppe Junkie **for taking the time to review!**


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